Putin apologises for Azerbaijan Airlines plane ‘shot down by Russian missile’

Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologised for an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that killed 38 people on Christmas Day.

The deadly crash landing is suspected to have been caused by Russian air defence systems damaging the plane as it tried to land at Grozny on Wednesday.

But Putin stopped short of accepting responsibility for what he referred to as a ‘tragic incident’ in a call with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

In a statement, the Russian government said: ‘Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.

‘At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks.’

Russian authorities initially claimed the flight was diverted over the Caspian Sea to Aktau Airport due to fog preventing landing at Grozny.

It then blamed the crash landing on a mid-air impact with a flock of birds, but images of the wreckage showed what looked like shrapnel damage or bullet holes in the fuselage.

Part of the plane wreckage at the crash site (Picture: Azamat Sarsenbayev/Reuters)

Azerbaijani government sources then told Euronews that a preliminary probe found that the flight was hit during drove activity above Grozny, with the missile exploding next to the plane and shrapnel hit passengers and cabin crew.

Ukraine had confirmed its drones were in the area that morning, with a government official later claiming Russia had hit the plane while

Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation, wrote on Telegram earlier: ‘Russia was supposed to close the airspace over Grozny, but did not do so.

‘The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan, instead of making an emergency landing in Grozny and saving people’s lives.’

A rescuer searching the destroyed plane wreckage near Aktau airport (Picture: AP/Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry )

Both pilots died in the crash when the plane burst into a fireball on impact. It was survived by 29 people.

One of those, Subkhon Rakhimov, emerged from the wreckage with only a bruised face and praised the cabin crew.

He filmed the final moments inside Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 before it crashed with 67 people on board.

Passengers were seen praying as others crowded around windows while oxygen masks hung from overhead compartments. Then a flight attendant’s voice was heard over the tannoy.

Mr Rakhimov said: ‘The flight attendant did her job perfectly, I don’t know if she survived or not, but she did her job perfectly.

‘Whether there was an oxygen tank explosion, experts will say, only they can say – it happened. But, there was an explosion.’

Part of the plane was not destroyed in the subsequent fire after the crash (Picture: Issa Tazhenbayev/AFP)

The Kremlin has warned against speculation over Russian involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the investigation was still underway and that it would be ‘incorrect to make any hypotheses’ before it concludes.

He said at a press conference: ‘It would be incorrect to make any hypotheses before the investigation comes to conclusions, and we definitely cannot do it and no one should do it.’

The Embraer 190 passenger jet had been flying from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

But it failed to land there, first diverting to Makhachkala before rerouting further east to Aktau, on the opposite coast of the Caspian Sea.

Foggy conditions were initially blamed, but passengers reported hearing an ‘explosion’ while attempting to land at Grozny, and footage of the wreckage showed bullet-like holes in the fuselage.

Kazakhstan’s senate chairman earlier said that the cause of the crash was still unknown in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

‘None of these countries – neither Azerbaijan, Russia nor Kazakhstan – is interested in hiding information. All information will be made available to the public,’ Ashimbayev Maulen said.

In the wake of the crash, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, said he was returning home from Russia where he had been due to attend a summit, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.

The crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane happened near Kazakhstan’s Aktau airport (Picture: east2west news)

Vladimir Putin expressed sympathies to Mr Aliyev in a phone call, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Grozny Airport was closed to incoming flights on Christmas morning after Ukrainian drones were confirmed in the area. Video footage shared on social media shows drones flying through fog near the city before being shot out of the sky.

Grozny is a heavily defended Russian enclave, with Chechnya and guerilla leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s fighters now essential to the Kremlin in Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine.

Azerbaijan Airlines has now suspended all flights on the Baku-Grozny and Baku-Makhachkala routes until an investigation is completed.

In a post on X, the airline said: ‘Today is a tragic day for AZAL. We extend our deepest condolences with profound sorrow to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew members who lost their lives in the crash of the Embraer-190 aircraft near the city of Aktau.

‘We pray for God’s mercy upon them. Their pain is our pain. We wish a speedy recovery to the injured.’

The Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 path before it crashed in Aktau (Picture: Flightradar24)

The plane was carrying 62 passengers and five crew members. Most of the passengers were Azerbaijani nationals while some were from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, according to BBC.

Most of the survivors were taken to hospital, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Kazakh health ministry.

Footage appears to show the terrifying moment the plane began to plunge before it turned into a fireball as it hit the ground.

The emergency services had to put out the flames at the crash site and 150 first responders were at the scene, the authorities said.

Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev has reportedly cut short his state visit to Russia where he was set to attend a conference today.

The emergency services battled a fire at the crash site (Picture: social media/ east2west news)

The Azerbaijan Airlines flight declared an emergency above the Caspian Sea before its altitude and speed data appeared to fluctuate on Flightradar24 which tracks and monitors planes worldwide.

The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water, and despite officially being a large lake, it is often thought of as a sea. It sees several days of fog throughout the year, including near Aktau which is on the coast.

Putin’s ‘Orwellian’ Russia will try to block the truth about the crash from coming out, a leading risk management expert told Metro today.  

Dr Simon Bennett, who has published extensively about aviation safety, also warned that routing commercial jets over ‘hostile environments’ is risky.  

‘My initial reaction is that the airlines should not be routing their aircraft into war zones,’ he said. 

‘My understanding is that the aircraft was flying into a region where Russian air defences have been intercepting Ukrainian drones, either physically, using surface-to-air missiles (SAM), or electronically, using powerful electronic warfare jammers. 

‘Routing commercial aircraft into such a hostile environment is risky – as evidenced by the fate of Malaysian Air Lines Flight MH17, which was destroyed over eastern Ukraine by a SAM fired from a Russian launcher.’ 

Dr Bennett, who has taught risk management at the University of Leicester for over 25 years, evoked George Orwell in assessing the Kremlin’s likely response to the disaster. 

‘The wise thing to do is to wait for the official investigation to publish its report,’ he said.  

‘Given Russia’s authoritarianism, however, I doubt whether Moscow will co-operate or, if it does, whether it will tell the truth.

‘As George Orwell noted, authoritarian states survive by manipulating the truth. As he put it in his novel 1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped.” 

‘In Putin’s Russia, history has stopped.’ 

James Smith